Fern

Does anyone know of any rumours about new models Palm may release this March/April. I am looking for a new Palm but I would be very annoyed to buy one of the current models only to find one that would suit me better is released only a few weeks later.

SoS

its aleardy March. The rumour mill hasnt ground into action yet. Maybe there will will be no significant spring release....

CroCo

...which would be quite boring.
There are two devices I would be interested in:

I would like to see an improved lifedrive with the memory management as everyone would like it to be (HD more like a persistent extension card...well could use exchangeable microharddrives or just put a big flash memory card in the package;-) ) and a TV-out line like on so many digital cameras....would be great to have a "palm-mediacentre" (can save the mobile, since palm IS mobile :-)))

And a treo with the TH55euro form factor and connectivity (BT and WiFi). But maybe we will get that with ALP at the end of next year...

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salesrep

AMEN Brother. . .!!!

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intellidryad

Unless Palm somehow got large flash memory chips at the crazy price Apple got for their iPod nano, I guess a model like that would really likely be over 800 bucks

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Jeff Kirvin

The sooner you guys accept that ACCESS and ALP are never going to have anything to do with the US market, the happier you'll be. ALP is not the next Palm OS. Period.

SoS

Ok Jeff, but what is going to be the next POS in your opinion??

Jeff Kirvin

Next? Next?!?

There is no next. Palm will continue to refine Garnet for the duration of their license, until 2010. By 2010, UMPCs and cell phones will merge into something new, and "mobile" OSs like Palm OS and WM and Symbian will no longer be necessary.

Until then, I'm happy with Garnet. It's almost perfectly adapted for what it does. I don't need more on my Smartphone. Garnet can do everything I want.

smoothjordan

What if palm releases a new OS before that time, will you stick with garnet because it can do everything you want?

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Jeff Kirvin

Actually, I'm planning to stick with the 650 even after the 700p (which also runs Garnet, but is EVDO) comes out. If it ain't broke...

But the point is that Palm isn't looking for a new OS. They don't give a toasted damn about ACCESS or ALP. Garnet does everything they need and they've already paid for it. They'll continue to refine it as needed, as they've done for the past few years, but for the most part Garnet is mature. It works.

I used a shark analogy a couple chats ago and it still fits. Sharks haven't changed appreciably in 300,000,000 years. Are sharks outdated or obsolete? No, they're perfectly adapted to what they do. As is Palm OS 5. There is no better smartphone OS on the market today.

zackepceo

A TH55 form-factor Treo isn't a smartphone, it's a PDA with a cellular modem. There's a difference...

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SonyStyle

windows mobile will conquer all

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AdamaDBrown

For the love of God, why? 128 MB and EVDO. Say it with me: 128 MB and EVDO. Or UMTS, probably, if you prefer.



If there's one truism in the computer industry, it's that progress doesn't stand still. At four years old, Garnet is already showing serious problems. Its marketshare has been shrinking for years, and if it weren't for the success of the Treo, it would have been even worse. Palm needs to be asking themselves whether there's going to be a market for Garnet outside Z22 style devices for more than another year. It's Windows 98. You may be able to extend it via hacking to a point, but it won't be as good as a fresher OS would be.

Jeff Kirvin

I have 9MB free out of 23MB on my Treo. Would life be sweeter if I had 44MB free (out of the 58MB of user-accessible storage on the 700p)? I don't need more memory.

As for EVDO, I doubt I'd notice this either. I have all the websites I use set up in SharkLinks on my Treo and they all go either to real mobile versions of the sites (I use m.gmail.com rather than any of the Palm OS mail clients) or filtered versions through www.google.com/gwt/n. I don't download podcasts or anything like that on my Treo (that's what iTunes is for), so would I even see the difference loading a 10kb page over EVDO versus loading that same 10kb over 1xRTT?

BTW, one of the reasons I have so much free space on my Treo is that SharkLinks allows me to have a ton of "web-based" applications. I use mobile Gmail instead of VersaMail, Chatter or Snapper. I use mobile.wunderground.com instead of 4Cast. I don't need Directory Assistant, I've got mobile.google.com/local. Showtimes? I've got mobile.fandango.com. The list goes on and on.

Like Palm OS itself, simple. Elegant. Easy.

But I digress.


Four years old doesn't logically connect to serious problems. There's no causality there.

The marketshare is shrinking because the market as a whole (including smartphones) is booming. If you look at just the smartphone market, Palm OS is the fastest growing platform, almost outselling RIM last quarter. In terms of units sold, Palm OS has never been more popular. It all depends on how you want to spin the numbers, but Palm OS is doing just fine, thanks.

Windows 98 is a bad analogy. I see Palm OS more like VMS or Unix. These systems haven't changed appreciably in 30 years because they got it right the first time. They do what they do so well that there's no need to change them. Palm OS is so well adapted to smartphones and other wireless handhelds that so far no one has been able to provide a better experience. For all the crowing about EVDO (which will come to Palm OS in the 700p, as you said), most reviewers agree that the Treo 650 is still more usable than the 700w.